Juventus match proved football is barking

Des Lynam may be widely considered to be in decline, but he was spot on last night. Des thought he could hear a dog barking during ITV's first-half coverage of the Juventus-Arsenal clash and he was absolutely right.

In the second half, the dog was virtually the only voice to be heard.

The crowd in the massive stadium - all Italian stadia are a massive rebuke to Wembley's silent twin towers - was 7,470, not including canines. This figure was fortunately augmented by a sizeable band of Israeli fans, en route to watch Hapoel Tel Aviv play AC Milan, and a bunch of British skiers, possibly hoping to pick up a discarded medal somewhere in the Alps.

Otherwise, the total could quite easily have been accounted for by the more enthusiastic mums and dads of the Juventus reserves on view. In other words, this was not a hot ticket.

There have been rumblings over the financial future of football. Television companies have belatedly realised that their greed and the need of fans to watch games that are of degraded significance is not compatible. Here, it was possible to watch the big money draining out of the game.

Admittedly, this match was a special case. The complex mathematics which govern the Champions League had put the game beyond the realms of mere football before the opening whistle. Everything depended on a match taking place 600 miles away.

This was football played according to the rules of 'Alice Through the Looking Glass': the winners are not necessarily the winners, and neither are the losers condemned to losing.

Only the spectators had been guaranteed an unsatisfactory outcome and they had voted with their bottoms way before the start.

Here, for anyone who cared to take notice, was a glimpse of football's nightmare future.

There were, of course, compensations. The sight of an inexperienced Juve team successfully playing the offside trap against Arsenal must have raised the spirits of anyone who has experienced the recurring nightmare of Tony Adams's upraised arm.

Then there was the performance at the microphone of 'Big' Ron Atkinson. Basically, if an object is not football-shaped, Big Ron will not recogniseit. When all signs pointed to the contrary, he managed to maintain the illusion that a real football match was being played.

Big Ron's voice, his whole persona, is a poignant reminder of the way the game used to be. If a sheepskin coat could talk, this is how it would sound. These, however, are scant consolations. The football carousel has long been powered by a steam engine which is starting to wheeze alarmingly.

Those big nights in Europe are not as plentiful as they seemed to be before. Or, perhaps, it is the opposite: there are so many big nights in Europe now that they cease to be so special any more. A long season of domestic strife does not deserve to end in an empty stadium in Turin.

I feel a bit sorry for Arsenal but there is no doubt that this game had gone to the dogs.